Unsanctioned Reprisal

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Nereid came to sit cross-legged on her chair and her hands began to unzip the top of her tank top. Pierce’s face flushed even more . . . “Uhh.”

  “Clothing as you know is a burden to me,” Nereid explained. “The heat it creates also increases the speed in which I can dehydrate.”

  “I’ll lower the temperature,” he said getting ready to stand.

  She held onto his arm. “That would only make Odelea uncomfortable.”

  The temperatures inside the lab were already at twenty-five degrees Celsius, the happy medium both humans and Aryile can operate in with few issues. Undine too, provided they received water, and lots of it. Living and working on a ship with a species-diverse crew was more complex than he thought it would be. Arguments about if it was too hot or cold were likely going to be commonplace.

  Pierce remained seated, and his mind once again started to drift back to his captivity amongst the Undine people. Being imprisoned for what seemed like two years from his perspective was something he was never able to shake off, or how his captors pulled fragments of his memories from his head with engrams. The Undine people, while under the control of Marduk, pressured him to reveal information about the Empire and the Hashmedai people after discovering his memories about Pernoy, an old Hashmedai friend of his, back on Earth.

  Nereid’s long raven-blue hair, in conjunction with reminiscing about that experience, brought back further memories of Pernoy and her long blue hair, though hers was a shade lighter. The way Nereid touched him, sent him back in time to an era when he and Pernoy would have wonderful laughter-filled conversations when they got lost within the downtown core of Vancouver.

  The lab’s doors opened and shut, delivering Odelea back inside with her hands bearing the gifts Nereid sought, two large bottles of water. Odelea handed the bottles to Nereid before striding over to her computer terminal.

  “Ah, she’s here, at last,” “Pierce said. “Let us continue—”

  Nereid hastily twisted the cap off, pouring the water into her opened mouth, half of it ended up splashing off her lips, running down her chin, soaking her partially zipped down tank top. Pierce forgot how to speak, especially when Nereid moved the nozzle of the bottle upward, allowing its contents to drain down over hair, further drenching her body.

  Odelea returned back to the two, munching on an apple, unfazed at Nereid’s actions or the growing puddle of water on the floor next to her chair. “Fascinating,” Odelea said, then paused to swallow her recent bite. “Do you require your body to be doused often like this?”

  “Not always,” Nereid said, placing the half-empty bottle down. “I neglected to rehydrate prior to entering and exiting cryo and didn’t hydrate enough during my recovery in sickbay. Furthermore, the modifications to my quarters have not been completed.”

  “What sort of modifications?” Odelea asked, then bit into her apple again.

  “I’m still a species from the sea,” Nereid said, pulling back her drenched hair off her shoulders, exposing the gills on her neck. “I have a need to return to the waters and swim. The captain put in a request for my quarters to have a small swimming area installed.”

  Pierce regained the ability to speak despite sitting next to a dripping water nymph and the full shape of her chest and nipples bleeding through her wet top. “On the Carl Sagan she . . . tried to turn her washroom into one. Foster and Rivera weren’t too pleased with the water damage.”

  A walk to grab a mop and clean up the watered-down floor, gave Pierce the chance to calm his thoughts. Odelea had called him back to his station. She and Nereid uncovered something about the data he brought back. He joined the two as they both stood at opposite ends to his chair and braced himself for what would come next when he sat. Two attractive women next to him, both nineteen to twenty in appearance, Nereid wasn’t the only person that wished the thermostat was turned to a lower setting.

  “Was that all you were able to find?” Odelea asked him.

  Pierce viewed the projection, and the pictures he recorded from the Draconian hologram found in the construct. “Yes, EDF wanted to leave at this point and pushed me away.”

  Odelea grabbed the holo screen, pulling it closer for the three to examine. Her arm brushed against his, transferring the warmth of her body to his, with the softness and unique feel of the scales cladding a section of her slender Aryile arm.

  He kept his focus forward, the best he could. Odelea pointed at the screen and the Draconian projection. “These look like words from their language,” Odelea revealed.

  “Are you able to understand it?” Pierce asked.

  She shook her head. “Not very well, I haven’t seen too many examples of their language in written form.”

  She scrolled the still image down to view the rest of the strange hologram. Pierce winced, wishing he kept his hands steady when he was recording. The picture probably wouldn’t have been as blurry as it was.

  Nereid pointed at the screen, her wet arm dripping water over Pierce’s shoulder. “I recognize some of these letters.”

  “Really?” Odelea said to her.

  “They are part of the ancient readings handed down to us over the generations, supposedly from the Goddess herself,” Nereid said. “These are different but look similar.”

  Nereid pointed to each of the letters, giving Odelea a quick rundown on how to pronounce them, which symbols were a form of punctuation, and which ones were numbers rather than letters.

  “Does it mean anything to you, Odelea?” Pierce asked her.

  “Yes, somewhat,” she said. “What we are looking at is a log.” Odelea pulled on the edge of the projection, forcing its view to enlarge, giving them a closer but blurry view of what was written. “I think it’s a communication log report.”

  “Communication with who?”

  “I’m not sure exactly,” Odelea said, pointing to the first string of Draconian written text. “This is a soldier announcing that a song is being listened to.”

  “A song? It must have been us then,” Pierce said. “Perhaps a transmission log of them discovering our location?”

  Odelea’s vertical iris eyes scanned the image further reading its contents. “No, this has nothing to do with us,” she said, keeping her eyes forward, something Pierce realized he had been doing, with her chest close to his. “They talk about other songs, songs from their fleet. It seems important to them that they heard the songs.”

  “Something tells me these songs are more than just entertainment,” Pierce said.

  Odelea identified imagery within the projection that looked like pictures of sound waves. “These must be the songs.”

  “Maybe, those look like sound waves,” Pierce said. “EVE? Is it possible you can replay the audio depicted in these sound wave patterns?”

  “It is possible,” EVE’s voice played over the speakers. “However, given the resolution of what you recorded, the sound replayed may not be accurate.”

  “Do it anyways, let’s see what happens.”

  “Please standby,” EVE said.

  EVE scanned the image of the sound waves and attempted to reconstruct the sounds via a newly produced audio playback file. The distorted noise made the three cringe and cover their ears.

  “That doesn’t sound anything like a song,” Pierce said. “EVE, is there any way we could clean it up?”

  “Unfortunately, this is the best I can do, given the limitations of the source material you have provided,” EVE said. “A clearer image of the wavelength would be required.”

  “Or . . . an actual recording of it,” Pierce drily said.

  Other sound wave pictures were found within the projection. Each one was scanned and reconstructed into sound to the best of EVE’s ability. They all produced the same noise due to the poor image quality.

  “Any of you two able to make anything out of these?” Pierce asked. “A word? A hidden code?”

  “Nothing, it’s just garbled sounds,” Odelea said. “Perhaps if I had more time, I might be abl
e to decipher some meaning to it, maybe even reconstruct the sound wave.”

  One particular reconstructed sound wave showed promise. It outputted soft humming ambient noises, unlike the screeching and irritating racket from the previous attempts. The audio playback instantly hooked Nereid’s attention to the screen.

  “That one.” Nereid excitedly spoke, and requested they played it on repeat. “The first three seconds of this, I understand it.”

  Now we’re getting somewhere, Pierce thought. “What’s being said?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Three seconds of someone singing the word nothing?”

  “No, it’s like a directional song,” Nereid said. “My people, when swimming through the oceans as you know, Pierce, communicate with telepathy.”

  “Naturally, you can’t use spoken words underwater.”

  “When traveling in groups to hunt, explore, or reach distant cities, we sing songs with telepathy,” Nereid continued. “Each song has a different use, some are to allow others to know what you are doing, and others are to give directions.”

  “Why not just directly relay that with telepathic communication?” Odelea chimed in.

  “It’s hard to explain.” Nereid paused to collect her thoughts. “Every part of our songs change based on who is singing it, and where they are, amongst other things. For example, if you are announcing your location to others, the song you sang told those that listen to it your size, mass, and exact location within the ocean. Should you sink to a lower depth; the song would change to reflect that.”

  “So, they’re not simply songs of someone signing,” Odelea said. “It’s telemetry data in the form of various sounds, put together to make a song.”

  “It’s almost like humpback whales of Earth,” Pierce said. “Their songs have been a mystery to us humans for years. The best we’ve been able to figure out was that it was some sort of communication since different songs had different meanings.” Pierce began to add up the facts with their recent discovery. His face lit up and his jaw dropped in awe, as he turned to face Nereid. “And the Undine did live within Earth’s oceans for a period of time, before Marduk changed that. But we’re getting off-topic.”

  “So, what we could be looking at are the Draconian ships communicating with each other, via songs,” Odelea said.

  “Songs that their soldiers and dragons understand,” added Pierce. “And their ships are living, organic beings, beings that sing to the others in the fleet their exact location in space, or destination.”

  Taking the projection with her, Odelea moved back to her workstation within the lab. She added content to her holographic notes with the aid of Nereid whom followed behind to her, further explaining the songs her people used to traverse through the oceans of Meroien. This, of course, all happened after Nereid took the time to douse her body again with water.

  Pierce remained at his computer, holding a holo pad before his face which displayed recent scientific discoveries made within the last seven decades. He still had quite a bit of catch-up learning to do, being the cryo sleep-in he and the Carl Sagan’s crew were, they missed out on a lot of those discoveries.

  “Care to join us, Doctor?” Odelea asked five minutes into his read.

  “Oh, I have other things to tend to,” Pierce said, spinning in his chair to face her. “Besides, it’s getting late, and I’m not much use at this point until we can get things translated. I can better assist afterward.”

  “I’ll probably be at that phase when I retire to my quarters,” Odelea said. “This is a fascinating find, and I intend to stay awake with stims to make as much progress as possible.”

  “I’ll catch up with you in the morning then.”

  Odelea gave him a warm smile as he stood up, making plans to leave. His feet moved to the exit, slowly. The smile and cute look Odelea was giving him continued to linger, she had something more to say he figured.

  He was right.

  “If you’d like, you are more than welcome to join me in my quarters—”

  His holo pad crashed to the floor. He had his wandering mind to thank for that. A number of tantalizing ways the two of them spending time in her quarters could end flashed in his head. Why else would she invite him, and only him, to join her?

  “Oh, my . . .” Were the only words he could muster.

  Odelea looked at the dropped holo pad, then back up at him. “Pierce, you okay?”

  “I’m fine!”

  Odelea was quick to pick up the holo pad, handing it back to him. Pierce was slow to take it back. Too bad for him, he didn’t notice Foster enter the labs at that point and look at him strange.

  “Let me know if you change your mind,” Odelea said.

  He took back the pad. “My mind?”

  “About joining me?”

  “Ahhh . . .”

  “To further study the data we found?”

  “Oh, right, yes, I will be in contact.” Odelea moved back to her computer, out of sight. Foster stepped closer to him, she wasn’t impressed. “Captain, what I can do for you?”

  “Just checking up on y’all, learn anything new?” Foster asked.

  “Might have come across telemetry data for their fleet,” Pierce said. “As for the purpose of the construct, that’s still a complete mystery, other than the fact it was used to store un-hatched dragon eggs. Right now, we’ve hit a bit of a language barrier these two are going to try and crack. I’m useless for the moment.”

  Pierce made a swift exit from the labs, Foster followed behind. The sheer number of rescued colonists still in the corridors prevented him from moving and allowed Foster to pull him aside.

  “What the hell was that, Pierce?”

  “I dropped my pad.”

  “Your eyes were looking down her top.”

  “Perhaps,” he groaned.

  “You remind of my papa, hell, you’re around the same age he was when I lost him.”

  The same age . . . Foster was eighteen when her father died during the Imperial invasion of Earth. Pierce had no children at that age. He didn’t have any at all in fact. What Foster said reminded him of the opportunities that moved past him in life, while he grew old. A family he could have raised but didn’t, an eighteen-year-old son or daughter he could have been watching head to college but wasn’t.

  Thankfully, gene therapy was a reality. They now lived in an age where one was never too old to do anything, including having and raising children.

  “The marriage between him and my mother nearly came to an end one night,” Foster continued. “Not sure I told you this, but he spent almost his entire life tryin’ to get into NASA. He did everything, multiple science and engineering degrees, became a walking atlas of the stars, spent time in the US air force.”

  “Unfortunately, none of that guaranteed you the job of an astronaut back in those days,” Pierce said.

  “He was a virgin until his late twenties, when he met my mother,” Foster said. “She was the only woman he had fun with, if you catch my drift.”

  “Sounds like he was dedicated to the cause, good for him.”

  “Like you, he gave lectures to university students.” They started to slowly make their way through the crowded halls, squeezing in between or around everyone. “Some of those girls thought he was pretty hot. Imagine the look and shock on my mom’s face when she caught him chatting with those girls, then later texting them.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Any of that sound familiar?”

  “A bit.”

  “My father was having a midlife crisis,” she said as they arrived at the elevator. “He ended up reflecting on all the things in life that passed him by because of his dedication to his goals. He never spent time with women when he was young and sought to do it when the crisis hit.” The doors slid open and Pierce froze for a moment, processing what she said, and what was going on with him. “I don’t care if you choose to shit where you eat,” Foster added. “Just don’t let it get you, or others, in trouble, like it a
lmost did with my father. He’d probably still be around today.”

  “I thought the Imperial invasion took his life?”

  The two stepped into the elevator, and its doors slid shut upon Pierce selecting the upper deck.

  “It did . . .” Foster said grimly, looking down at the floor. “There were other factors that resulted in it. Maybe I’ll tell ya later. Just remember what I said, okay?”

  “Will do, Captain.”

  Pierce was having a midlife crisis.

  It was the worst thing he could be battling with during this critical time, given the state of the galaxy and his vast scientific knowledge. He needed to focus and stop chasing the past to experience the things he never had the chance to do when he was younger and working hard to get the best grades possible.

  18 Foster

  XSV Johannes Kepler

  Near Amicitia Station 14, Arietis system

  October 14, 2118, 23:05 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  To the untrained eye, the XSV Johannes Kepler appeared from a flash of light when it dropped out of FTL and slowly approached the enormous space station of Amicitia Station 14 with guidance thrusters. There was no shortage of light reflecting off the hull of the ship, thanks in part to the four stars that brightened the Arietis system.

  The Johannes Kepler glided past idle Imperial warships that were moving to dock with the station’s arm, built to serve the needs of the Empire. Radiance cruisers flying in a tight formation drifted ahead, having recently departed from the Radiance arm of the station, on a course to the wormhole that will link with Radiance controlled space. Qirak cargo ships waited patiently for clearance to dock, they had been waiting over an hour, every single airlock close to the atrium arm had been occupied by smaller trade ships, or personal transports owned by traveling merchants and wanderers from the Morutrin system.

  When the Kepler was close enough, it gave onlookers that peered out the various observation windows on the station, a breathtaking view of the ship when it made its way to the UNE arm. A mother held her child up and pointed and waved at the arriving Kepler. Two businessmen sitting and eating at a restaurant briefly stopped to look out the window and watch the sunlight reflect off the Kepler’s hull.